A Study On The China Foreign Ministry Spokesperson’s Remarks From The Perspective Of Critical Pragmatics

As one of the important subjects in building China’s national image,the remarks of the China Foreign Ministry spokesperson are an important means to convey the attitude of China’s government and political stance to the world.Now,the study on the China Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s remarks mostly focuses on pragmatic strategies,discourse style,news communication,translation strategies and so on,while the research on how the China Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s remarks express the China’s political stance and shape the positive image of China is limited.In addition,when COVID-19 became a global pandemic in 2020,China suffered many negative reports from the Western media that confuse the public.At this time,it is particularly important for the China Foreign Ministry spokesperson to convey China’s voice,make clear China’s political stance,eliminate misunderstanding,and build a positive national image.This thesis randomly selects 206 remarks on COVID-19 made by the China Foreign Ministry spokesperson at regular press conference from January to December 2020 as an analysis corpus.From the perspective of critical pragmatics,the speech act theory and pragmatic macrostructure theory are taken as the theoretical framework.With qualitative analysis as the main research method,supplemented by quantitative analysis,this thesis makes critical pragmatic analysis of the China Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s remarks from both the micro and macro levels.It also explores the spokesperson’s discourse characteristics and the use of the performative verbs,analyzes the semantic and logical progressive relationship and pragmatic functions of the macro speech acts,sub-global speech acts and speech acts groups of the China Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s remarks.And finally,it reveals how the China Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s remarks correctly convey China’s political stance,realize the discourse purpose,and shape the positive image of a great power.At the micro level,the research shows that the China Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s remarks are mainly representatives speech acts,especially asserting speech act.At macro level,firstly,the overall speech acts of the spokesperson’s remarks are representatives macro speech acts and then the sub-global speech acts of spokesperson’s remarks are composed of representatives – expressives illocutionary acts and representatives –directives illocutionary acts,which mainly consist of representatives speech acts group,expressives speech acts group and directives speech acts group.Through the critical pragmatic analysis of the China Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s remarks related on COVID-19,it shows that the Chinese government has realized the China’s political stance of holding a positive and optimistic attitude towards the epidemic situation,giving correct public opinion guidance,calling on the international community to support the work of the World Health Organization and making continuous efforts to promote the process of antiepidemic cooperation among the international community.This has shaped China as a responsible major country with correct guidance,acting transparently,respect for science,active cooperation,and humanitarian spirit.Analyzing the China Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s remarks from the perspective of critical pragmatics,on the one hand,it can expand the application scope of the critical pragmatics theory.On the other hand,it has practical significance for the establishment of diplomatic discourse system with Chinese characteristics and has a far-reaching impact on the positive output and communication of China’s image.